Editing Lane Seminary (section)

===Weld organizes "debates"===
Lyman Beecher, head of the Seminary, was a colonizationist,<ref name=Beecher/><ref name=Lesick/>{{rp|94}} and gave a speech on that topic to the Cincinnati Colonization Society on June 4, 1834.<ref name=Beecher2>{{cite magazine
|first=Lyman
|last=Beecher
|authorlink=Lyman Beecher
|title=Dr. Beecher's Address
|magazine=African Repository
|date=November 1834
|url=http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abes38at.html
|access-date=November 1, 2019
|archive-date=May 31, 2017
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170531163738/http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abes38at.html
|url-status=live
}}</ref> At Lane there was a "colonization society", supporting the efforts of the [[American Colonization Society]] to send free blacks to Africa, to Liberia. How it came to be is not known, but it was there when the Oneida contingent and friends arrived. There had been similar groups at Western Reserve and other colleges.

Weld read [[William Lloyd Garrison]]'s new abolitionist newspaper ''[[The Liberator (newspaper)|The Liberator]]'', begun in 1831, and his ''Thoughts on African Colonization'', which appeared in 1832. These had a great influence at the other eastern Ohio college, [[Case Western Reserve University|Western Reserve College]], leading to [[Beriah Green]]'s four published sermons,<ref>{{cite book
|first=Beriah
|last=Green
|authorlink=Beriah Green
|title=Four sermons preached in the chapel of the Western Reserve College : on Lord's Days, November 18th and 25th, and December 2nd and 9th, 1832
|location=Cleveland
|year=1833
|url=https://archive.org/details/foursermonspreac1833gree}}</ref> and his relocation under pressure to Gale's school, Oneida. What Garrison desired, and he convinced Green, was "immediatism": immediate, complete, and uncompensated freeing of all slaves.

Over a period of several months Weld convinced nearly all of the students individually of the superiority of the abolitionist view. To generate publicity for the abolitionist cause, Weld announced a series of "debates". Weld "had no intention of holding a debate on the pros and cons of antislavery."<ref name=Lesick/>{{rp|77}} "There was little opposition, little conflict, and consequently little debate."<ref name=Richards>{{cite book
|title=Gentlemen of property and standing: anti-abolition mobs in Jacksonian America
|last=Richards
|first=Leonard L.
|year=1970
|oclc=923435787
|url=https://archive.org/details/gentlemenofprope0000rich/page/74/mode/2up/search/Filled
|location=New York
|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|isbn=978-0-19-501351-1
}}</ref>{{rp|41 n. 39}} In his correspondence Weld informed friends that he was trying to get the anti-slavery (immediatist) argument and evidence out to as many people as possible. Nevertheless, what was announced was debates, on two points.

When the merits of the proposed solutions to slavery were debated over 18 days at the Seminary in February 1834, it was one of the first major public discussions of the topic, but it was more of an anti-slavery revival than a "debate". No speaker appeared to defend either [[slavery in the United States|American slavery]] or the colonization project.